Flower of my Youth
by Inkfire
Summary: Where characters give themselves - or the one thing from themselves that they can't ever get back. Various pairings.


**This fic is intended to become the first one of a series focusing on characters losing/giving (or both) their virginity. Odd idea, I suppose, but I thought it could be interesting. It's not supposed to be particularly smutty, though I guess it might turn out this way. It's not the focus I'm going for, anyway – I guess we'll see how it turns out. First chapter is quite decent. =) Feel free to request characters or even pairings, though I can't promise I'll do the pairings if they collide with my headcanon ;) **

**This one is a bit different since it was written for a challenge, so half of it focuses on Andromeda's loss of her virginity, and half of it on its consequences. It is compliant to my fic Dustland Fairytale, so non-readers might be surprised by my take on those events, but I hope the fic is self-explanatory enough that everybody gets it. If you are unsure about something, I don't bite and I always reply to reviews. The timeline isn't your usual, so pay attention to that as well. I think that's all… Yes. I shall stop rambling now. **

**This was written for Lady Eleanor Boleyn's Three Reasons challenge on The Dark Lord's Most Faithful Forum, and also fits the May 2****nd**** Prompt of the Day on Hogwarts Online****: ****"What you give is what you get."**

_**Three Reasons **_

_**For these two weeks, I'd like you to write a story either inspired by or incorporating this quote here - "That's three reasons for being the most deceitful creature on God's earth." Full Credit goes to Phillippa Gregory's Anne Boleyn, who gave me the line... **_

* * *

I.

The Hog's Head is where they meet.

Meda wears a hood, throwing her face into shameful shadow. Many others are dressed similarly in the dank, smelly pub – it is a place of deceit, where not a soul deals with their businesses in the open, where nobody could be quite truthful. Andromeda is a Black, and she cannot be seen here. In such occasions she has to hide, or she could lose everything.

Numbly, she feels one of her friend's hands squeezing hers under the table as the other stretches out and seizes the vial they came for. Carmilla thanks the man dryly and pays with the money Meda handed her earlier, then they are up – and out.

She gets sick in the darkened side street, with her friend holding her hair – again.

(Whispers of the unknown – she has lost everything, already.)

* * *

– III.

Bright, blinding lights.

Andromeda laughs. Andromeda dances – her hand tight in Cara's in the foreign, animated place, she is another person, stripped of her pureblood skin. Reborn, she twirls, downing a drink she drops as hands unexpectedly catch her waist. She turns and meets twinkling eyes – _remember, you are free tonight, now is your time, live a little, reckless, madness, God knows you need it_ – and he is a Mudblood, they all are Mudbloods here and she doesn't care.

She dances, with his hands on her porcelain skin.

* * *

II.

"Of course I'm all right," she says, "everything's normal. Everything's fine."

Her hand is half-raised in self-protection and the other curled into her robes fingering the fabric nervously, and still Bellatrix buys it. She shrugs and laughs, _guess you were a bit pale, that's all_, before she's off in her own quickly-darkening little world again.

What you give is what you get, and Meda loathes secrets but she cannot demand the truth, not now, maybe never again – Meda needs to flee from the truth, to conceal and deceive with all she has, and it takes her whole focus. It's not about her sister anymore – everything is about her and what she has to hide.

(Meda is a traitor, and traitors are halfway gone from the family already.)

* * *

– II.

She falls backwards, hitting pillows with an airy giggle.

She feels hot and happy, a little gone – really gone – not thinking, not worrying for once. His mouth is warm and soft and his hands just a bit rough, and it feels _good_. So she gives into the sensations, kissing back, peeling off their clothing with peals of laughter.

This is her moment, this is what it's like to be alive, skin to skin and clinging to broad shoulders, not feeling the pain. Her heart hammers and so does his, close, so close underneath a bit of flesh and muscle – their raw, honest, similar hearts. Their equality.

Fearless, she offers herself – fearless, she drifts off to sleep, in foreign arms.

* * *

III.

"Everything will be all right," he promises – one more lie or maybe not.

Ted does not intend to lie to her anyway. She considers him with keen, lucid eyes, and she knows – from the bottom of his heart to every tentative brush of fingers, Ted is truth. Ted is loyalty – such a Hufflepuff. So open. So readable.

It reassures and terrifies her.

"Yes," she whispers back and from her lips it is a lie. Everything is a lie these days, anyhow. It hurts her – it hurts like hell, like she deserves, the utter lack of candor in her being.

(Whore.)

Love is purity, little Meda believed. Love is princesses and knights, love is whole and true, untouched by doubt or any secondary preoccupation. But she is no more princess. She has fallen quite low and she cannot take it any longer –

"Take me away," she says and it is the only thing she knows, between fear and shame and craving freedom.

He smiles at her. "I will."

She loves him for loving her.

(Ted gives, no matter what.)

* * *

– I.

There's a hurricane in her head, pain and confusion tossing everything aside in their wake.

Her eyelids creep open reluctantly, heavy with fear and the consequences of her own acts. Andromeda sits up, fighting nausea. Her head throbs, and a foreign arm restrains her moves, coiled around her waist. She has to tug it off. He does not wake up.

She doesn't even know his name.

She wanders through a large flat, pushing doors numbly as though she could get away from herself. Pictures pinned against the wall stare back at her. They stand still, cold and still and dead, the way she feels.

(Trapped.)

She doesn't know how to get home. (She isn't sure home will still stand where she left it last.)

Alone in a foreign kitchen, Andromeda tastes doom in her bitter mouth.


End file.
